This invention relates generally to social networking, and in particular to inferring sentiment polarity for users of a social networking system.
Social networking systems commonly provide mechanisms allowing users to interact within their social networks. A social networking system user may be an individual or any other entity, such as a business or other non-person entity. Social networking system information that is tracked and maintained by a social networking system may be stored as a social graph, which includes a plurality of nodes that are interconnected by a plurality of edges. A social graph node may represent a social networking system object that can act on and/or be acted upon by another node. A social networking system object may be, for example, a social networking system user, non-person entities, content items, groups, social networking system pages, events, messages, subjects (such as persons, places, things, abstract ideas or concepts), or other social networking system objects, such as movies, bands, or books.
An edge between nodes in a social graph represents a particular kind of connection between the nodes, which may result from an action that was performed by one of the nodes on the other node. Examples of such actions by a social networking system user include listing social networking system objects in a user profile, subscribing to or joining a social networking system group or fan page, sending a message to another social networking system user, making a purchase associated with a social networking system node, commenting on a content item, or RSVP'ing to an event.
As social networking system users interact with pages in the social networking system, e.g., by commenting on page content, posting to the page, liking the page, or other interactions, valuable information could be determined from the interactions if the sentiment of the user toward the content (e.g., positive or negative) as known. For example, page owners may desire to better understand user reaction to the page content, and advertisers may be interested in a user's sentiment toward a particular page or topic. Therefore, there is a need for a reliable method for determining the sentiment of a user of the social networking system toward a page or topic, based on the user's interactions with a page or topic.